About Danielle Cobo: Danielle Cobo is a speaker, author, and podcast host who works with organizations to develop the grit, resilience, and courage to thrive in a rapidly changing market. She is the author of the book and hosts the podcast “Unstoppable Grit” Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals.” This “monster truck driver in heels” gets Lou to jump in the truck while she’s racing toward greatness in an unstoppable episode of Thrive LouD. As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she propelled her team to the top national ranking despite the upheaval of downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions. Her commendable leadership earned her the prestigious title of Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Danielle.
In this episode, Nancy and Danielle discuss the following:
- Danielle’s upbringing and how she was raised resilient by her single mom
- The fear of the unknown and imposter syndrome
- The importance of confidence in achieving sales success
- Danielle’s career journey in medical sales and her transition to entrepreneurship
- The inspiration behind Danielle’s book, “Unstoppable Grit”
- Danielle’s perspective on failure and the importance of learning and growth
- Believing in oneself is the key to success
Key Takeaways:
- And imposter syndrome is a big roadblock that can paralyze our career.
- When we have confidence, we’re willing to take more risks.
- I’ve always loved sales training and leadership development, and that’s always been my favorite part: mentorship and leadership.
- I think my upbringing is why empathy is one of my core values.
“In my book, I talk about the seven roadblocks that stand between us and achieving our goals, and one of the most common roadblocks that we often run into is this fear of the unknown. Our mind likes to know what will happen in the future, but we don’t always know what will happen in the future. And so sometimes when we’re stepping in, when we’re presented with an opportunity per se, say, it’s a new job opportunity or a new sales opportunity, a new opportunity to work with a client, sometimes that fear of the unknown can be paralyzing because we don’t want to fail. But at the same time, if we don’t put ourselves out there and try and explore new avenues of growing our business, career, and life, we’ll never know what’s out there unless we try. So, fear of the unknown is a big roadblock that a lot of us run into.” – DANIELLE
“What inspired me to write the book is when working with clients, I saw some commonality amongst many of the clients I was working with. It was those common roadblocks: the fear of the unknown, perfectionism, imposter syndrome—all of these common roadblocks. I saw some consistency in what I saw and the advice I gave. I also found that many people continuously said, when in my initial conversations with them, “I want clarity. I want clarity on what the future is going to bring.” So, in the book, I give people each chapter as a story, learning lessons learned through different experiences and practical advice that they can take away and apply to their life on how to build a career and life that they truly love, feel fulfilled and purposeful in. That’s what inspired the book: I wanted more people to see what is possible truly, to think outside the box of what’s possible in their career and their life, and have clarity on what they want.” – DANIELLE
“I would say that failure, we don’t fail. I believe that when we say, “Well, we failed,” it means it’s definite. We did something, failed at it, and that’s it. And if we look at failure as something that didn’t work out, we miss the opportunity to learn and grow for something. So, I believe that we don’t fail. We either choose to learn and grow. We learn and grow from every experience that we want. Maybe it didn’t go in our desired direction, but we still took something out of it. So, to say that we failed gives ourselves a disservice of going through that experience.” – DANIELLE
Connect with Danielle Cobo:
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Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time again for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Danielle Cobo, a renowned figure in the world of personal development. Danielle is the esteemed author of the bestselling book, Unstoppable Grit. Breakthrough the Seven Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals, and is also the host of the globally acclaimed Unstoppable Grit podcast. As an award -winning career leadership and sales performance coach, she has empowered countless professionals to accelerate their careers, enhance sales performance, and foster a connected company culture through her impactful keynote speeches, corporate workshops, and personalized coaching sessions. It is a pleasure to have you on the show, Danielle. Welcome.
Danielle Cobo: Thank you, I am excited to be here. [1:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I am excited to have you, you know, and doing some research. I know you stayed on your website, raised resilient, fueled by grit. What do you mean by that?
Danielle Cobo: So, I was, when I say I was raised resilient, I was raised by a single mom who modeled for me what drive and motivation and grit and determination are. When I was five years old, she was a single mom. She was going to school full time. She was serving at a restaurant, and we lived in this one-bedroom apartment and my bed was in the living room of this apartment. And I saw my mom go from really having nothing. I mean, we were barely making ends meet. My school clothes, I remember being on layaway. I shopped at thrift stores. I lived on mac and cheese and SpaghettiOs. And I saw her graduate college and get into medical sales and climb the corporate ladder in medical sales, becoming a Fortune 500 sales manager in the 1990s as a female, which was unheard of at the time. So that’s why I say and a lot of my upbringing there was some beautiful moments and some broken moments. So that’s why I say I was really raised resilient, and it was modeled for me. [2:46]
Nancy Calabrese: What a great role model your mom was or is, my goodness. That was a gift that she gave to you.
Danielle Cobo: It really was, yes, absolutely. And I pursued in her footsteps as well. So, my career was in medical sales just like hers was. [3:03]
Nancy Calabrese: That’s funny. Okay. So, you know, you state that there are common roadblocks standing between us and achieving sales goals. How do you break through them? What do you need to do to overcome that?
Danielle Cobo: Well, in my book, I talk about the seven roadblocks that stand between us and achieving our goals. And some of the most common roadblocks that we often run into is this fear of the unknown. Our mind likes to know what’s going to happen in the future, but we don’t always know what is going to happen in the future. And so sometimes when we’re stepping in our, when we’re presented with an opportunity per se, say, it’s a new job opportunity or a new sales opportunity, a new opportunity to work with a client. Sometimes that fear of the unknown can be paralyzing because we don’t want to fail. But at the same time, if we don’t put ourselves out there and try and explore and try new avenues of growing our business, our career, our life, we’ll never know what’s out there unless we try. So, fear of the unknown is definitely a big roadblock that a lot of us run into. [4:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, what are some of the other ones?
Danielle Cobo: Some of the other ones is imposter syndrome. And imposter syndrome is a big one that can be very paralyzing in our career. And one of them being, you know, you go for, you see a job opportunity, perhaps it’s with a new organization or perhaps it’s with a promotion within your organization. And the minute we start to read the job description, we start to disqualify ourselves before we even qualify ourselves for a particular position. And oftentimes that imposter syndrome is thinking, well, other people are more qualified than I am. Or we start to think, I don’t have those particular industry experience, but we forget to think about what are the transferable skills that we have and what are the experiences professionally and personally that have shaped us into the person that we are today that have prepared us for that particular role. [5:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. I have a question. Why do we naturally disqualify ourselves before we qualify?
Danielle Cobo: Well, our brain naturally goes in protective mode. So, a lot of times when we are presented with something new, our protective mechanism within our brain says, don’t, don’t try this because we want to protect ourselves from being hurt because of experiences that we’ve had in the past. [5:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. So, I know that you earned four consecutive awards for top sales performance and region manager of the year. Congratulations. Yeah. So, what distinguishes the best performing sales reps over the average ones?
Danielle Cobo: What I have noticed within my own career as well as working with sales professionals, specifically in medical sales, is confidence. I don’t want to say that mindset is a woo -woo -hoo thing. I don’t want to sound woo -woo, but I’ve also believed that when we have confidence in ourselves, we’re willing to take more risks and put ourselves out there and try more. So, if we have confidence in ourselves, we’re willing to do more cold calls. When we have confidence within ourselves, we’re willing to take more risks. When we’re confident within ourselves, we’re willing to ask for the business. And so, one of the biggest aspects that I see in those that are successful is confidence. And I once had a client that I was working with. She had been in medicals. She had been in her current company for five years, she was a consistent performer, but had never earned president’s club for top performance. And we started working with each other. And what I often have seen is these barriers. It’s my quote is too high. I don’t have the right accounts in my business. I’ve already proposed that before. It’s not going to work. This isn’t the way we’ve always done it. So, we, it’s almost like we’re presented with a challenge, and we talk ourselves out of it. And when we start to rebuild on the confidence, that’s where I see the most growth happen. And my client ended up earning President’s Club that year. [7:33]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. You know, I’m curious. I mean, what motivated you to start your own business?
Danielle Cobo: I had no intention of starting my own business. Truth be told, I had been with the company I’d been with for seven years. I was leading a team in the medical aesthetic industry and through a series of six-month events. So, in 2020, life for many of us, it shifted, it changed. And for me, it was a series of three events. First, my husband had just returned home from serving a year deployment in Iraq. And while he was in Iraq, my twin boys at the time were between the ages of one and a half and two and a half years old. I was traveling 60 % of the year. And there was a time, right a couple of weeks before he got home, that his base was hit with 13 missiles. So, we didn’t know whether he was gonna make it home or not. And so,
Nancy Calabrese: That’s pretty scary.
Danielle Cobo: That really kind of put perspective as to what’s important in life. And it was my family. So much of my life had been focused on my career and my family is very important to me, but sometimes I feel like looking back, I put my career a little bit before my family, which is hard to say. And the second event that happened was March 8th. I lost my mom, so my mom had passed away and she had passed away from suicide. So it was very unexpected. It was devastating a lot of guilt associated with that. And so, a week later, the pandemic hit. And so, I wasn’t even able to, to really cope and heal with the passing of my mom because she lived in California. I lived in Florida and all the flights had been canceled. And then the fourth event was there’s four events. the company that I had been with had been acquired by another organization and it became, there was an employee on our team that became very, very toxic and it became an uncomfortable working environment for many people on my team. And the culture had shifted. So, people that had been with the organization for 14, 25, 30 years ended up leaving the organization. And so those series of events, led me to leave the organization and I said, okay, well, if I’m going to start looking for a job, I want to start developing my brand on LinkedIn. And this is where the, this is where really my life shifted. And I started to develop my brand on LinkedIn, and I was talking about, I was really talking about motivational stuff. So how to excel in the interview process, how to build confidence in sales, just sharing different. tips and motivations and inspiring, try to be inspirational others because it was during a time where a lot of people were losing their jobs, and they were feeling frustrated and defeated. And so, as I started to build my brand presence on LinkedIn, people started to reach out to me and asking me for career coaching. And this is when I experienced imposter syndrome. I was like, who am I to call myself a career coach? First off, what is a career coach? Second, who gives me the right to call myself a career coach? And it took some self -reflecting to really think, wait, people are coming to me because they see value. They see the value in the seven years of experience that I have in building high -performing teams and my experience in earning four consecutive President’s Clubs Awards. So, As I started to look for a job, people started to reach out to me and they started to hire me for coaching and eventually got to the point where my business was growing to the point where I said, well, what would it look like if I tried this? You know, I’ve always loved sales training and leadership development and that’s always when I look back at my career, that’s always been my favorite part is the mentorship portion and leadership. [11:52]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Danielle Cobo: And I believe nowadays, a lot of people want to get into leadership because they’re like, I want to mentor others. But I believe nowadays in corporate, that’s becoming less, and less time is given towards mentorship, which is unfortunate. It’s a lot more politics and admin and reports. [12:14] And so, mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. And.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. and that’s so important too, to have a mentor. Yeah. Everybody needs one. Even a business owner needs a mentor.
Danielle Cobo: Absolutely, I have hired several coaches since starting my business and it’s beneficial too when you talk about a mentor. Having a mentor that somebody outside your organization where you can be vulnerable and have very candid conversations and not fear that your job is at risk because you’re able to talk openly and honestly about how you feel about colleagues, the work environment, the culture, what are some of your concerns, where are some of your vulnerabilities. And that’s where I believe that I’ve always had a mentor, but to have somebody outside the organization that can be there for you for support and accountability and conversations is extremely valuable. [13:04]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, I totally, I totally agree with you. I adore my business coach. She’ll put a bullet in between in my forehead. She’s very honest and you need that kind of clarity, especially when you’re running a business. I want to talk about your book. I mean, what inspired you to write Unstoppable Grit?
Danielle Cobo: What inspired me to write the book is when working with clients, I saw some commonality amongst a lot of the clients that I was working with. And it was that those common roadblocks. It was the fear of the unknown. It was the perfectionism, imposter syndrome, all of these kinds of common roadblocks. And I saw some consistency of what I was seeing and some advice that I was giving. And then also I found that a lot of people, continuously said when in my initial conversations with them, I want clarity. I want clarity on what the future is going to bring. And so, in the book, I give people each chapter is a story, it’s learning lessons that were learned through different experiences and practical advice that they can take away and apply to their life on how to build a career and life that they truly love. They feel fulfilled and purposeful in. And that’s what inspired the book is I wanted more people to truly see what is possible, to think outside the box of what’s possible in their career and their life and have clarity on what they want. [14:38]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, I also read on your website that a school counselor told you you’ll never amount to anything, which is a horrible thing to say. And you were a teenager. How did that statement impact you?
Danielle Cobo: That was a hard statement to hear, but it really was kind of one of those defining moments in my life where I learned that there is not everybody knows what’s going on behind the scenes. And my mom and I had a very beautiful and a very broken relationship. My mom was somebody that was a role model for me, but she also did suffer from depression and bipolar disorder. And she kicked me out when I was 17 years old. And so, when I got kicked out, I remember going to the school counselor after an incident, and that’s when the school counselor said, if you don’t go back home, you’re not going to amount to anything in life. And I think that my upbringing is really why empathy is one of my core values is because so often we’re quick to judge on what people are going through and quick to say what they can or cannot do when we don’t truly understand what’s going on in their life and how they’re feeling and what are the circumstances that they’re dealing with, but they may not be vocalizing. And I was dealing with a lot at that time. [16:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Wow, you are sure. And look what you’ve achieved. You got to be proud. Pat yourself on your back. Tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Danielle Cobo: I would say that failure, we don’t fail. I believe that when we say, well, we failed, it means that it’s definite. It’s we did something, we failed at it, and that’s it. And if we look at failure as it just didn’t work out, then we miss out on the opportunity of learning and growing for something. So, I believe that we don’t fail. We either choose to learn and grow. We learn and grow from every experience that we want. Maybe it didn’t go the direction that we wanted, but we still took something out of it. So, to say that we failed gives ourselves a disservice of going through that experience. [17:02]
Nancy Calabrese: I like that. I like that attitude. I think you’re absolutely right. And you know, we’re coming up in time. It goes by so fast. But what is one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Danielle Cobo: When you believe in yourself, others will believe in you too. It’s got to start with you. [17:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. You’re an amazing lady, Danielle. How can my audience find you?
Danielle Cobo: I am on all social media platforms. However, the platform that I spend the most time on is LinkedIn. That is my favorite platform. And then of course, they can get my book, Unstoppable Grit on Amazon. [17:44]
Nancy Calabrese: Got it. And Danielle’s last name is Сobo, C -O -B -O. So go find her, connect with her, and really benefit from her expertise. I want to thank you for spending time with us today, Danielle. I know the audience doesn’t know this, but you were on what, 30 podcasts in the last month and a half?
Danielle Cobo: Yes, I’ve been on a lot. [18:09]
Nancy Calabrese: I would shoot myself for that many. But thanks for giving us 20 minutes or 18 minutes of your valuable time. And for everyone out there, make it a great sales day. Again, Danielle, thanks for being on the show.
Danielle Cobo: Thank you. [18:25]
